Cornell Mathematics Doctorates, 1868-1939.

The Charter creating Cornell University was signed by the Governor of New York in 1865 and the University opened in 1868.

This page gives the complete chronological list, per decade (except for the first period of twelve years), of the people who earned a doctorate in mathematics at Cornell from the opening in 1868 to 1939 included. One hundred doctorates were awarded by the department during this period including twenty one awarded to women.The title of the doctorate and the name of the advisor are given as well as minimal information on the later career of the individual.

1868-1879 (1 doctorate)

Henry Turner Eddy, 1872

In 1972, Eddy received the first Ph.D. awarded at Cornell in any subject. He was an Assistant Professor in Mathematics at Cornell. There is no record of his dissertation. He had a brilliant scientific and academic career.

Annie Louise McKinnon, 1894

Agnes Sime Baxter, 1895

Title: On Abelian integrals, a resume of Neumann’s ‘Abelsche Integrele’ with comments and applications. Advisor: James Oliver. Baxter is the second Canadian Women to receive a mathematics Ph.D.

Charles Worthington Comstock, 1898

Title: The Application of Quaternions to the Analysis of Internal Stress. Advisor: Unknown. Comstock received a M.C.E. degree in 1894. He was an Instructor in Civil Engineering until 1897 when he left Cornell for a position at the Colorado State School of Mines. He earned his Ph.D. in 1898 in absentia. His dissertation is very mathematical and refers to ideas suggested by H.T. Eddy.

Harry Waldo Kuhn, 1901

Peter Field, 1902

Title: On the Forms of Unicursal Quintic Curves. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: University of Michigan.

Henry Lewis (Louis) Rietz, 1902

Title: On Primitive Groups of Odd Orders. Advisor: George A. Miller. Career: University of Iowa. Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Toronto 1924.

Clarence Lemuel Elisha Moore , 1904

Title: Classification of the Surfaces of Singularities of the Quadratic Spherical Complex. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

John Wesley Young , 1904

Title: On the Group of the Sign (0, 3, 2, 4, ∞) and the Functions Belonging to It. Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson. Career: Dartmouth College.

Oscar Perry Akers, 1906

Title: On the Congruence of Axes in a Bundle of Linear Line Complexes. Advisor:Virgil Snyder. Career: Allegheny College.

Elmer Clifford Colpitts, 1906

Richard Morris, 1906

Title: On the Automorpic Functions of the Group (0,3,l_1,l_2,l_3) . Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson. Career: Rutgers University.

Charles Herschel Sisam, 1906

Title: On the Classification of Scrolls of Order Seven Having a Rectilinear Directrix. Advisor:Virgil Snyder. Career: Colorado College.
Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Toronto 1924 and Bologna, 1928.

Francis Robert Sharpe , 1907

Title: The General Circulation of The Atmosphere. Advisor: James McMahon. Career: Cornell University (served as Chair 1923-26).

Clyde Firman Craig, 1908

Title: On a Class of Hyperfuchsian Functions. Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson. Career: Cornell.

1910-1919 (16 doctorates)

Harold Bartlett Curtis, 1910

Helen Brewster Owens, 1910

Title: Conjugate Line Congruences of the Third Order Defined by a Family of Quadrics. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: Cornell (first women to serve as Instructor in the department), Pennsylvania State University, Associate Editor of the American Mathematical Monthly.

Paul Prentice Boyd, 1911

Title: On the Perspective Jonquieres Involutions Associated with the (2, 1) Ternary Correspondence. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: University of Kentucky (including Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences 1917-1947)

Frank Millett Morgan, 1912

Robert Wilbur Burgess, 1914

Title: The Uniform Motion of a Sphere Through a Viscous Liquid. Advisor: Francis Robert Sharpe. Career: Purdue University, Cornell and Brown University, Western Electric Company, 1924-1952, Director of U.S. Census Bureau, 1953-1961. Served during World War I.

David Sherman Morse, 1923

Jesse Otto Osborn, 1923

Title: A Study of the Rational Involutorial Transformations in Space Which Leave a Web of Sextic Surfaces Invariant. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: author of children mathematical books.

Julia Trueman Colpitts, 1924

Title: Entire Functions Defined by Certain Power Series. Advisor: John Irwin Hutchinson (and C.F. Craig). Career: Iowa State University. Served as president of the Women's Scientific Society.

Julia Dale, 1924

Title: Some Properties of the Exponential Mean. Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz. Career: The University of Oklahoma, Delta State College in Cleveland, Duke University where an undergraduate prize is named after her.

Arthur Keller Waltz, 1927

Title: The steady flow of liquid through a circular hole in an infinite plane. Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe. Career: College of Steubenville, Ohio.

Hannibal Albert Davis, 1928

Title: Involutorial Transformations Belonging to a Linear Complex. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: The University of West Virginia.

Howard Adams DoBell, 1928

Title: On the Geometry of the Triangle. Advisor: Walter B. Carver. Career: New York State College for Teachers, Albany, N.Y.

Ralph Lent Jeffery, 1928

Title: The Uniform Approximation of a Sequence of Integrals and the Sequence of Functions Which Define a Definite Integral Containing a Parameter. Advisor: David C. Gillespie. Career: Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. The building housing Mathematics and Statistics at Queen's University is named after him. Served as President of Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Mathematical Society. The Jeffery–Williams Prize is a mathematics award presented annually by the Canadian Mathematical Society.

William Thomas MacCreadie, 1928

Title: On the Stability of the Motion of a Viscous Fluid. Advisor: Francis R. Sharpe. Career: Taught at Bucknell University.

Franklin Grandey Williams, 1929

1930-1939 (40 doctorates)

Ralph Palmer Agnew, 1930

Title: The Behavior of Bounds and Oscillations of Sequences of Functions Under Regular Transformations. Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz. Career: National Research Fellow, Cornell.

Walter Hetherington Durfee, 1930

Title: Summation Factors Which are Powers of a Complex Variable. Advisor: Wallie A. Hurwitz. Career: Hobart and Smith Colleges (Head of Mathematics, Dean, Acting President, Provost). W.H. Durfee is the son of William Pitt Durfee who received his Mathematics Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1883 under J.J. Sylvester and was Professor of Mathematics at Hobart and Smith. He is the father of William Hetherington Durfee who earned his Mathematics Ph.D. at Cornell in 1943 and the grandfather of Alan Hetherington Durfee who earned is Mathematics Ph.D. at Cornell in 1971.

Leaman Andrew Dye, 1930

Title: Involutorial transformations in S(3) of order n with an n-1 fold line. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: The Citadel.

Harry Isler Lane, 1930

Title: The Separation of the Projective Plane by the Lines Joining Six Points Advisor: Walter B. Carver. Career: Hendrix College.

Ethel Isabel Moody, 1930

Title: A Cremona Group of Order Thirty-two of Cubic Transformations in Three-Dimensional Space. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: Sweet Briar College and Pennsylvania State College.

John Albert Hyden, 1934

Clarence Raymond Wyllie, 1934

Title: Space Curves Belonging to a Linear Line Complex. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: Ohio State University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, the University of Utah, and Furman University.

Gertrude K. Blanch, 1935

Title: Properties of the Veneroni Transformation in S(4). Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: Hunter College, Technical Director of the Mathematical Tables Project in New York City. Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1962); Federal Woman's Award (1964).

Livingston Hunter Chambers, 1935

Harriet Frances Montague, 1935

Title: Certain Non-Involutorial Cremona Transformations of Hyperspace. Advisor: Virgil Snyder. Career: University of Buffalo. The Harriet F. Montague Award is given each year to a junior who has demonstrated "intellectual and creative promise in mathematics.”

John Adam Fitz Randolph, 1935

Title: Carathéodory Measure and a Generalization of the Gauss-Green Lemma. Advisor: David C. Gillespie. Career: Cornell and the University of Rochester.